Women play a major role in producing and securing food, managing natural resources, and earning an income either formally or informally in natural resource management and agricultural activities. Even the first goal of the Millennium Development Goals calls for the recognition of women for socio-economic development. In Morocco, despite major funding from the international funding agencies to address the issues of poverty, illiteracy, social exclusion and gender inequality, the country still struggles to integrate rural women in Moroccan society.. In this presentation, I show that the standard development model for isolated rural communities does not benefit women at the local level. “Development” increasingly requires new forms of “tailored measures” where priorities are shifted from the established models and allow women and communities to occupy a central place, focused on the local and traditional.